The Gulf Coast Lumberman reported in December, 1918, that Rex H. Browne, manager of Beaumont Lumber Company's hardwood department, left Beaumont Lumber to become a manufacturer of hardwood lumber. He had bought several months earlier a hardwood mill at Dyersdale, about eleven miles from Houston. This may have been the Lodswick Lumber Mill built there in 1915. The 25,000-feet daily capacity sawmill was cutting “oak and gum timber, of which there is a generous supply in the vicinity of the mill.”